Website Event Calendars for Solopreneurs? Simple & Easy Tips! Ep 87

Unlock the full potential of your small business with my insider tips on enhancing visibility through strategic event promotion.

In this episode, I lay out a roadmap for coaches, consultants, and solopreneurs to make their mark with an impactful events calendar.

You’ll get a peek into my own tactics for promoting all  your events, from interactive virtual workshops to those exclusive client meet-ups.

Not only will you learn how to list events to demonstrate your expertise, but I’ll also guide you through using landing pages to convert curious site visitors into engaged participants.

And don't worry about keeping your audience in the loop; I've got a solid routine with LinkedIn and emails that keeps everyone eagerly anticipating what's next.

Step up your organizational game with our deep-dive into event calendar management, where efficiency meets innovation.

I chat about the ease of maintaining a fresh and relevant events list with the help of smart tools like Tockify and how it integrates seamlessly with website solutions like Kajabi.

As promised, here are the links I've mentioned:

View my LIVE Event Calendar:
https://www.mellermarketing.com/events-presentations

Event Calendar - Tockify
https://tockify.com/ -- offering a free and paid version
 
Website -- Kajabi: use my link for 30 days free
https://app.kajabi.com/r/6L82zSo7/t/mtjgzuip

As always, my affiliate links -- including Special Offers & Partner Discounts -- can be found here: https://www.mellermarketing.com/specialoffers 

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15 LinkedIn Profile Tips for Coaches and Consultants

FREE Download at mellermarketing.com/list

This checklist provides 15 quick and easy ways to update your LinkedIn profile TODAY and help generate more leads for your coaching / consulting business.

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My name is Brenda Meller. I'm a LinkedIn coach, consultant, speaker, and author. My company is Meller Marketing and I help business professionals get a bigger slice of the LinkedIn pie.

Visit mellermarketing.com

Let's connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brendameller
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:01

As I'm sitting down to record this episode, it is Sunday, april 21st, 2024. And every Sunday, I do something, which is prepare a LinkedIn post for my upcoming events. Now, if you are a coach, consultant, solopreneur, small business owner and part of your business is hosting or speaking at events, this episode is for you. In today's episode, I want to talk about why you should have an events calendar on your website and some of the techniques that I use that might be helpful for you to consider as well. So first, when we're talking about events, I want you to keep in mind that there are a variety of events that we could be referring to here. Things like virtual events, webinars, et cetera Could be conferences. These could be corporate events, either virtual or in person. These could be live workshops that you're leading. These could be LinkedIn live events, which are on video, or LinkedIn audio event, or even a clubhouse event. These could be podcast interviews where you are a guest, and these are being live streamed on YouTube or another channel where you can direct people to watch you as the interview is occurring. These could be events that you host with professional organizations. Now, I am a member of Inforum and we host a monthly recurring affinity group meeting where we host guests, so that might be an example. This could also be members-only events that you do, such as group coaching, office hours or masterminds, whether those are open to the public or for members only, so you actually might have a variety of events. So you might want to start this process just by creating a list of all the different types of events that you do, especially if you don't have an event calendar yet. Let's start to pull together all of those resources. Now, what I recommend that you do is add all of these events to your website calendar, even those that aren't open to the public, and let me tell you a little bit why. Now, I have started shifting recently from doing a lot of free events to more closed events, client only, etc. And what I found is that by doing so, it's actually helping me to be more profitable with my business and a lot more focused on events that are driving my bottom line. Now I'd like to include all of these on my website calendar, and this is something I started doing fairly recently, and part of the reason I do this, even for those events that aren't open to the public, is it helps to show people my breadth and depth as a speaker, and that might be something that can help you as well.

Speaker 1: 3:29

Now for closed events or client only events. I don't give them all details. They can't get into the event. There's not going to be a specific registration link, but instead, what I recommend that you do is use generic info and drive your site visitors to a landing page where they can learn more about booking you. So, for example, if I am speaking at a client event and the attendees are only employees of the organization, I'm not going to disclose the name of the company nor where the event is being held, but instead I might direct people to the team training link on my website where they can learn more about booking me to train their team. So it's a little bit of a sales technique, if you will.

Speaker 1: 4:10

Now for public events, things that are open to the general public. I like to keep a running list on my website because it helps my audience and my site visitors people like you to keep informed. I always like to consider that social media is rented real estate and even if it is a LinkedIn Live event or a Clubhouse event, I don't own those properties and someday those events could go away or LinkedIn Live could decide not to allow you to house events someplace on their website, so I like to put them all in one place. And the thing is, too, you own your website. You can control what goes on your website and where it sits. And even if LinkedIn or Clubhouse or these other platforms Eventbrite etc they start to reorganize how you can get in and look for those you can't control that right, but you can control how it looks on your website. I also would recommend that you do regular reminders, so don't just add these events to your calendar, but try to remind people on a periodic basis.

Speaker 1: 5:05

Now here's what I do Every week. Typically on Sundays, I will do a weekly LinkedIn post. Now I've noticed recently many people are following my lead, or maybe I'm following their lead. I'm not sure let's do this first, but people like Bobby Umer, annette Richman, kenneth Lang, linda Brubaker we've all started doing these weekly event posts and a lot of times, if we're posting one another, we'll tag the others in there. So we started to notice that there's like this pattern of people that are posting events on Sunday. I also would recommend that you do a monthly email going out to your full email list. I usually like to do mine the first week of the month and in my email, at the bottom, I will provide a topic opt out. So if you're not interested in learning at all about my upcoming events, you can opt out of those event emails and I simply remove people from that list before I send it out to my full email list.

Speaker 1: 5:58

Now, speaking of websites, I use Kajabi, which unfortunately has a lot of great features, but it doesn't have a built-in calendar feature. So I kind of asked around and I found Takafi, and that was what a lot of people were using. You can do Takafi for free, but I've decided to do the paid version. It's only $80 a year and that allows me to embed the events into my Kajabi website. I can put some of my own formatting in there and I really like this paid version. It's only $80 a year, so it's a really low cost to do so, and I do like the additional functionality that you get with that paid version. By the way, anytime I give mentions to websites or partners that I use, I always like to look and see do they have an affiliate program? Because if I'm going to give a shout out to Takafi and I give them some business, maybe my affiliate program link might give you a discount and I might be incentivized as well. Unfortunately, takafi does not have an affiliate program that I could find at this time. Kajabi does, so I will include my link below if you're interested in looking at signing up for a Kajabi account.

Speaker 1: 7:00

Now let's talk about what should be in each event listing. Now, when I'm thinking about what to put in an event listing, I like to think about the five W's plus a few additional items. So the five W's are the who, what, where, when and why. The who is who is the event for. So make sure it's clear to someone who's reading the event that they understand who the event is designed for, who should attend your event, the event, that they understand who the event is designed for, who should attend your event, the what is what is the event, and that might include the event title, any description that goes along with it as well.

Speaker 1: 7:30

Where is? Where is the event being held? Is it virtual and, if so, on which platform? Do they need to sign up in advance, etc. Right? Or if it is in person, then let people know the address, the name of the venue, address, if there's any parking instructions or instructions on entering a building in there as well, when is the date and time?

Speaker 1: 7:48

And for virtual events, sometimes I will add in multiple time zones, because I know that some of my audience members are not in my Eastern time zone, where I'm located. They might be coming from different parts in the world. And I also like to include the why. So sometimes I like to do an attend and learn these three things, for example, or if you're hosting someone, they might give you some. Here are some key takeaways that you'll gain by attending this event. So the why is really important because it helps to hook people in right Creates a little bit of that FOMO, that fear of missing out.

Speaker 1: 8:17

And then the additional items I like to include in each event listing include these two how much is it? If it's free, I like to spell it out. If it's a paid event, I like to include if there's a member rate and a non-member rate, or if there's different early bird rates and things like that, that you should include that in the listing. And the final item is how do you register? Now you might be driving everybody to your website, but it's actually a LinkedIn Live event, so we need to drive people back to the LinkedIn Live to watch the event live, or it might be through. I'll use Inforum as an example. I have to drive people to the Inforum website to register for the event and save their space, but then they're actually attending in person at our location host. So make sure that it's very clear. How do you register? And you're Now.

Speaker 1: 9:08

Sometimes you might find that you have recurring events and I have recurring events. I have a Friday VIP job seeker office hours, which occurs every first Friday of the month from 10 to 11 am Eastern time. If so, I make sure that my event graphic is the same cover graphic for every recurring event, but I don't have any dates in it. That's really important, especially if you're using Takify. There's a really simple technique to create recurring events inside there and just make sure that the cover graphic doesn't get dated over time. Okay, and also, for recurring events, instead of sending people to a specific page for every event, I like to direct people to an event landing page. So for my Friday VIP, you can go to mellormarketingcom slash Friday VIP and the event registration is there. And now in this case it is a recurring. You can go to mellormarketingcom slash FridayVIP and the event registration is there and now, in this case it is a recurring. You only have to RSVP once and then it's managed through ad events. So it adds it to your calendar on an ongoing basis. But I like to make sure it's clear to people where can they go for those recurring events, to register and to find all of those upcoming dates.

Speaker 1: 10:08

Now, what about those private events that I talked about earlier, those that are for corporate clients or for my members or clients only? Well, first thing, if it's for a client, I don't mention the client name, I don't say the name of the organization. Instead, in the event graphic and everywhere in the description for that event, I just call them a VIP client, right? That creates a little bit of that specialness for the organization that's booking you and also a little bit of mystique for people. They're like, ooh, is this VIP client she's holding? Right For members or for clients? I might direct people to where they can join my program or, if it's not an open and ongoing enrollment, how they can get on my wait list. And this technique has actually worked. I've had people reach out to me and join my programs because they started seeing my members only events and they're like how do I get in. Do you have a backdoor? Can you admit me now? Right, so it can be really powerful.

Speaker 1: 11:02

And if they are members who are reading these events, I like to make sure it's clear where I can direct these paid clients, these paid members, and where they can join the event live. Because you know, just as I'm putting this on my website for the public to see, I'm also trying to make it really easy for my members and clients to get into the event, and I do send them email reminders and I do social media posts and different things as well. But they might go to the same place that everyone else is looking my event calendar. If so, I like to make sure that it's clear where they can get the information to join on the day of the event live, and it might be check your email for details from me. Look for the subject line XYZ, or it might be. Go to this login page and click on this bonuses area to see the list of dates or, I might say, reminder these dates and the link to join the Zoom will also be in our private members only LinkedIn group. So I give them those instructions. Some of you might be using a Facebook group or Slack channel, et cetera, but do make sure that it's clear where they can join the event live if they are a member. All right, and that's it.

Speaker 1: 12:04

And today's Sunday, I'm going to go and get started on getting these events updated on my Techify page, which will then embed into my website, and do a little bit of edits on my Canva graphics first before I do so.

Speaker 1: 12:17

So I do this every week and I have to say it might seem like a lot of work, but if you do this every week, it's not as much work. All you need to do is add in your new events that are going in there, and the great thing about Takafi is it drops off the old events, so I don't need to go through and remove items from the calendar as they have passed. It just will add in the new events as they are reoccurring. All right, that's it for today. I hope you found this helpful. If you did, please let me know, reach out to me wherever we are connected, whether it is on email or Instagram or LinkedIn, and send me a quick message and let me know that you listened to this podcast and if you have any additional tips that you would add as it relates to event marketing and using an event calendar on your website. Until next time, take care.